Analysis: Two Ways to Look at Rove Controversy

ByABC News
July 12, 2005, 1:28 PM

July 12, 2005 — -- There are two important and distinct lenses through which Karl Rove's possible connection to the leaking of a CIA operative's name must be viewed -- the legal and the political.

The investigation into who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the media has recently focused on Rove, one of President Bush's closest advisers, after reports surfaced that Rove had spoken to a Time magazine journalist about Plame.

The legal portion of the story is largely in the hands of the special prosecutor investigating the leak, Patrick Fitzgerald. The outcome will rely on the facts of the case and Fitzgerald's judgment. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, continues to assert his client's innocence and that Rove is neither a target nor a subject of the investigation. Luskin has also emphasized that the purpose of Timereporter Matthew Cooper's phone call to Rove was to discuss welfare reform and that Rove had no intention of bringing up the Wilson/Plame story until Cooper raised the issue.

The political lens provides an entirely different view as best exemplified by the contentious briefing Scott McClellan provided for reporters Monday at the White House, where he was asked more than 30 questions about Rove's involvement in the story and all he was able to offer up was a refusal to comment on an ongoing investigation.

The most important thing to watch going forward is how members of the president's party respond to the swirling controversy. If some Republicans begin to get nervous that the Rove controversy may cause them problems moving their agenda forward, they may begin to speak a bit off-message.

The Republican message, for now, is to label the questions surrounding Rove as purely partisan in nature and to assert that he was simply trying to steer a reporter away from what he saw as a story based on a false premise from a questionable source -- Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador who had been critical of the White House.

Whatever else one thinks, these facts are not in dispute:

A. Rove's attorney has acknowledged that he talked about Plame with Cooper, without mentioning her name, days before Robert Novak's column publicly revealed her identity.